


in saecula saeculorum

by sirsable



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alpha Steve Rogers, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Captain America: The First Avenger, Comfort, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Kissing, M/M, Naked Cuddling, Nesting, Omega Bucky Barnes, Omega Verse, Protective Steve Rogers, Scenting, World War II, talk about mating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-21 05:21:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18137906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirsable/pseuds/sirsable
Summary: Steve and Bucky steal some time for themselves while on leave in London. The world might be at war, but for just one night, maybe Steve can provide his omega with some peace.Written for the Hell Yeah Bottom Bucky Fest 2019.





	in saecula saeculorum

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Prplprincez](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prplprincez/gifts).



> Written for the Hell Yeah Bottom Bucky Fest 2017, prompt #126. The prompter ([Prplprincez](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prplprincez)) asked for scenting, nesting, and love shown for each other. I'm not positive this is what they meant, but it's what happened when I started writing. I really did try to write fluff. D: Sorry. orz
> 
> Quick beta by the ever-wonderful [coldwinterrose.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldwinterrose)

When Bucky walks into the dingy hotel room, there’s a disorienting moment when he’s not sure what he’s looking at. Since arriving in Europe, he’s been in crowded tents and bombed-out ruins and, hell, even that work camp only a few weeks ago. He’s been on the forest floor, in foxholes, under scratchy wool blankets and atop rock-hard cots. So walking in the room Steve insisted be set aside just for him—to allow him some time to recover from his captivity at Hydra’s hands—and finding all of _this_ … it’s something of a shock.

“Bucky?”

He looks at Steve, who’s hovering anxiously in the corner of the room, awkwardly hunching his shoulders up around his ears in an effort to appear smaller than he really is. Bucky blinks at him, then gazes at the ground by his feet and back again. This only makes Steve shrink in on himself more.

“I’m sorry. Was this a bad idea?” And when no response is immediately forthcoming, Steve slinks forward and starts to reach for one of the pillows. “I knew it was a bad idea. I shouldn’t’ve—”

“You made me a nest,” Bucky interrupts, still staring blankly at the evidence in front of him.

Steve’s hand stops in mid-air, then slowly drops back down to his side. “Yeah,” he admits, shifting nervously. “I thought—I mean, I guess I didn’t think. But you seemed real low lately and this is the first safe place we’ve been. Well, not safe, but it’s behind Allied lines,” he babbles.

Bucky looks back down at the carefully-constructed tangle of what looks like every soft thing Steve could find—blankets, pillows, bedclothes, even some towels. And, Bucky realizes, it’s all built on top of a mattress Steve must have dragged off the empty bed frame shoved against the wall. There are carefully-shielded candles providing light, cups and canteens of water, and what looks like crackers, jam, and some kind of sausage. His alpha has made him a nest—or as close to one as they’ve ever had—in a blacked-out hotel room outside London in the middle of the goddamned war.

“I love it,” Bucky says loudly, cutting off whatever Steve had been stammering out about how maybe Bucky would be more comfortable in his own room or in officer’s quarters, as if his alpha hadn’t just offered him perfection.

“You do?” Steve’s eyes light up with cautious hope, his weight shifting restlessly from side to side. “I could try to find bread,” he offers, like it isn’t a small miracle he’s got this much food that _isn’t_ Spam or corned beef. “They don’t ration it or anything, but no one had any fresh in the city so I thought—but I could still—”

Bucky finally shakes himself free of his stupor and starts stripping, effectively shutting Steve up. But as soon as he’s gotten his shirt off, he starts regretting it. He hasn’t been with Steve for almost an entire year, and he’s not the same cocksure, charming omega Steve promised to one-day-maybe bond with back in Brooklyn. He’s got gun oil ground under his nails and new scars on his body and all his soft edges have been ground sharp by death and loss and fear. His hands never shake any more—it’s one of the reasons they started him up as a sniper, his steady hands—but he thinks he might be trembling as he undoes the buttons to his pants. What if Steve, now that they have time to really stop and look at each other, decides that Bucky isn’t who he wants anymore?

Large hands cover his, stilling his movements.

“Hey. Look at me, Buck.”

Bucky takes a deep breath and glances up through his lashes, not sure if what he’ll find there.

Steve… well, he smiles like the sun’s finally come up. Like Bucky looking at him is all he needs, like it’s warming him up from the outside in.

And Bucky doesn’t know what to do with that anymore. Doesn’t know how to handle the image Steve’s got to have in his head of him, probably still shiny like a brand-new nickel and not this tarnished, scuffed-up thing he’s become. He doesn’t know how to break his alpha’s heart. “Stevie—” 

“So beautiful,” Steve murmurs. He lowers his head and presses the back of Bucky’s hand against his forehead for a moment, like he’s seeking the omega’s blessing. Then he carefully presses his lips to Bucky’s broken, scarred-up knuckles, kisses tender and kind. “I always knew, from the moment I saw you, that I’d never see anything better in my whole life. And I was right.”

“You’re saying that in a bombed-out hotel halfway ‘round the world,” Bucky chokes out.

“And I’d say it to you at standing at the Ritz, or in Buckingham Palace, or in the fields of France or the mountains of Switzerland, and it would be true every single time.” He thumbs at Bucky’s half-open fly. “May I?”

Bucky nods, closing his eyes and swaying into it when Steve kisses him tenderly. The alpha is careful—almost reverent when he slides Bucky’s pants off, warm hands staving off the persistent cold. Steve looks up at him and gestures, crawling in to pull back layers of the nest. Bucky follows him and settles in, watching while Steve strips bare before joining him, burrowing them both under the blankets. Bucky ends up on his side facing Steve, and his alpha presses his face into Bucky’s neck with a sigh, curled in so small that it’s almost like he’s a hundred pounds again. Bucky slots his legs neatly between Steve and pulls him close, breathing in the dark-earth smell of him, still the same half a world and a lifetime later. It’s comforting in a way it maybe shouldn’t be, holding his too-big alpha in his too-thin arms, the two of them huddled together in their own small corner of this fucked-up world.

If he closes his eyes, Bucky can almost imagine that they’re back in their tenement in Brooklyn. The floors creak and the windows are drafty; the place smells a little of mildew and the blankets are so well-worn that even the cheapest of cotton is soft as silk. Even the smoky scent filtering through the air is a little like home, the haze of too many stoves burning whatever trash people can scrape together. God, he wishes they were home again.

“Don’t be sad, Bucky.” He looks down, startled out of his thoughts, just in time to see Steve flick out his tongue to lap at Bucky’s skin like he can taste the emotions there. And who knows? With his new, enhanced senses, maybe he can. “I’ll take care of you.”

“That’s my line, punk.” Bucky dredges up a tired smile and tilts Steve’s face up so he can press their foreheads together. Steve reaches up to tug a fold of fabric over them, making a little tent to block out even more of the world. Weak candlelight filters in through the gaps and edges and Bucky thinks for the millionth time about how much his alpha looks like an angel. “How’d I get so lucky, huh?”

“You don’t gotta be so strong all the time. I can do that part for a while.”

He can feel the expression on his face falter at that. “I know you can, Stevie.” He has to blink fast to stop the tears threatening to fall. If he starts now, he’s not sure when he’ll stop, if he’ll just crack and shake apart and get sent home. And he can’t leave Steve like that.

“I love you,” Steve murmurs, tenderly mouthing at Bucky’s bare shoulder, brushing his throat along his skin and pushing his scent in. Marking him like a mate would.

“Oh God, Stevie. Oh God, I was so scared.” His voice breaks and he buries his face in Steve’s soft hair, chest so tight it’s a wonder he can even breathe. Tears burn his eyes, painful in their intensity, and he has to bite his lip not to sob out loud. Cry quiet, that’s what the trenches taught him, and the nights standing sentry and in sniper nests and in that cell in Austria. Quiet, quiet, quiet.

“I’m proud of you.”

The mattress shifts under him and there’s a terrifying moment when Steve’s warmth is pulled away, but then he settles his bulk atop Bucky and wraps him up tight in his arms, gently kissing away his helpless tears.

“Oh, sweetheart, I’m so proud of you. So proud. Thank you for telling me.” Steve hums and does his sweet alpha rumble, the blanket above them trapping in the soothing, protective scent of him.

It’s just like before, only nothing like. Back at home, Steve busted up from a fight, angry and powerless and aching. Bucky pulling him into bed, telling him how proud he was for him standing up. How wonderful his alpha was, how steady, how strong. And Steve would give in, just like this. Cry, just like this, and hold on to Bucky and let himself be soothed for once—just _once_ in their stupid, dirty lives, he was allowed to be weak. And now, just as he said, it’s Bucky’s turn.

“Alpha, please. _Please._ ” He doesn’t even know what he’s asking for anymore, but Steve does. He leans his weight down as much as Bucky can bear it, and it’s like he’s pressing the sadness out of him, filling him with the warmth and pressure of his love. Like he can sink down into Bucky’s skin, make them close enough to breathe the same breath and beat from the same heart. He surrounds him completely, until it’s only him, only _them_ and the safe haven Steve built. A home away from home. A comfort when Bucky needed one. It’s clumsy and poor and kind of a mess, but what in their lives isn’t?

“My brave omega.”

Steve’s never called Bucky that before—his omega. Alpha posturing Bucky would have hated before, but it just makes him cry harder now, until the sounds are being ripped from somewhere deep inside him. His omega. His. _Steve’s._ His alpha finds the softest corner of the softest blanket and carefully dries his face with it, patient in the face of his grief. Here, in the safety of their nest, Bucky lets Steve’s kindness lance his fear like a blade to an infected wound, the balm of his love seeping in to take its place.  
  


* * *

  
  
When he’s quiet again, Steve kisses him once, twice, thrice, and then feels around under one of the pillows mounded around them until he comes up with a handkerchief. Bucky laughs wetly at the conjuring trick—Steve really did raid every soft thing available, it seems—and takes it. As soon as he can smell properly again, he nuzzles at Steve’s scent glands, getting one lungful and then another, rubbing to stimulate them. He won’t leave until they smell like each other, and he doesn’t care who knows it. Steve lets him, rolling onto his back so Bucky can do as he likes, his own hands roaming and memorizing every new line on Bucky’s body.

“You should eat something soon,” Steve tells him drowsily, hands still petting down Bucky’s flanks soothingly. “And you need to drink some water.”

“Bond with me.”

Steve’s eyes fly open. “What?”

“Bond with me,” Bucky repeats. “Be my mate.” He pushes himself free of the blankets and sits up a little so Steve can see him; see how serious he is.

“I—”

“Do you want to?”

“Yes, of course.”

Bucky nods, relieved. They used to talk about it, but those were always dark, bedroom kinds of things. Wistful wishes whispered between them. Nothing like this.

“But I don’t want you to regret it.”

“I won’t,” he says simply. Because it’s true: His cell was cold, there are monsters in men, and Bucky Barnes will never run out of love for Steve Rogers. There’s nothing about being with Steve that he could ever regret.

“Tomorrow.” Steve sits up, too, sheets pooling around his waist. “If you still want it tomorrow.”

He’s tired of tomorrows. Bucky knows that tomorrow isn’t a promise; that it might not come. Out here, that’s more likely than not, and he doesn’t want to wait. But yesterday he didn’t know he could have what he does right now: this one, pure night with the man he loves. Maybe he shouldn’t get too greedy. Maybe, just this once, tomorrow will actually be all right. Steve’s gaze is steady and earnest in the glow of the candles, and even if he didn’t think so before, Bucky would know that he’s for true. Steve never breaks his word. Not to him.

“Okay. Tomorrow. You’ll make me yours tomorrow.”

“I’ll be yours, too, Buck. I already am. Always have been, till the end of the line.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still around to poke at on tumblr [@sablessx](https://sablessx.tumblr.com/) and Dreamwidth as [sable_lecroix.](https://sable-lecroix.dreamwidth.org/)


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